ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Augustine on war from the perspectives of the three approaches: that of historians interested in Augustine's historical context and his thought within that context, the view of Augustine's thinking on war provided in the passages collected and preserved in the medieval collections of canones, and the approach of an influential late 20th-century just war theorist. The medieval approach to Augustine on war through excerpted passages from his works made into canonical guides for Christian living reflected both economic factors and spiritual ones. While medieval thought used Augustine on love as a guide to personal sanctity, Ramsey's focus on the idea of love of neighbor reflected a different conception of the purpose of Christian living, one dominant in Protestant Christianity at the time. This way of thinking about the moral justification and limitation of Christian participation in war yields what Ramsey identified as two moral principles: discrimination and proportionality.
